Dragons Art Thread

[Dragonstorm]

Okay, I realised I make too many threads, so I'll try and keep my new work to this one for now. I hate this being the art seciton mind you, cause I'm not an artist tbh. I just have too much time on my hands and don't care if it looks crap, hehe. It should be renamed to "art" imo.

Anyways, my latest bit of time wasting is yet another of my friend's sketches coloured in to help me learn how to stay inside the lines:

His sketch

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/8365/angelsketchyy8.jpg

My colourings

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/1543/angeleg2.jpg


I quite like the firebal, but mainly because it's FFVII style :D

I can instantly see tonnes wrong with it though tbh. I've left lots of bits of the highlights ging outsidethe lines, and the highlights on his armour need to be smaller and not as in your face too. I think they make the armour look a bit too smooth and spandexish! The colour of his armour is kinda sucky too... But I couldnt think of anything else I wanted. It was originally a really bright silver, but it looked even worse!

I'll edit the post when i decide how to fix it i guess!

edit:
I darkened the armour, took away some of the highlights etc, a fixed a few li'l details that buged me. I still don't think I like anything bar the fireball colours though, lol.

[Twaggy]

As said in another thread drags.... HOLY SH*T!

[Jekht]

love the lighting on the back of the leg mate! Keep up the good work!

[Denary]

wow v nice considering you drew it from scratch, my limit is stick men :D
although I can make a nice flash of stickmen.

[HoniezUk]

COR! thats a nice pic thur DS well done nicly colored. teach me how to draw like that master!!

[Dragonstorm]

Thanks everyone :D

Been practicing my eyes the past couple of days. One realish, one animeish. I wanna practice the anime one more than the real one though methinks. Hopefully I'll be able to draw something pretty nice if I keep at it ^^


http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/9656/eyeva6.jpg





http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2266/eye2ae5.jpg

[Dragonstorm]

Just spent the last 20 mins adding in an eyebrow and eyelashes whilst drinking the most tasty cup of tea ever! I like it more with them, although I think I should redo them, cause they look kinda crazy!

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/1502/eye2ap6.jpg

[HoniezUk]

wow i love them. i love drawing eyes.. altho i can only do one.

did you draw this with pencil or on the computer?

[Dragonstorm]

Oh, I did it on my luverly new tablet in photoshop. I'm really loving it still, because like I said the other day, it lets even me do things that don't look half bad, hehe.

I orignally bought it because I do so much texturing, and wanted it to help add some detail. Although the first bit I actually got around to doing was only a couple of days ago.

This is a texture I drew (is that a word?!) for that final fantasy bomb I posted a pic of, and then how it mapped:

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8291/bombtexcu9.jpg

http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/9141/bombrft8.jpg



Hehe, now not that it's the best model I've ever done, far from it. But considering it took me about 30 mins to make the model and do the texture, I was pretty happy. Even just on a simple texture like that though it made all the difference. I couldn't have even hoped to get something like that with my mouse.

I managed to get a really nice pencil in photoshop too, and set my pen pressure to control opacity/darkness. Works really well, and you can get some really nice sketchy looking things happening. That then works really well with layers to just colour over or under it :)

Here's one of my best ever attempts at drawing a person from a week ago. Now, before you laugh, don't forget, I'm not an artist like you Hon, I just only post the stuff I get lucky with hehe.

Anyways, I quite like the pencil I ended up with, not necessarily the picture, jsut the pencil brush. It just pen pressure controlling opacity, a black brush with noise and scattering turned on, but I think it comes out pretty pencilly!
Oh, and then is what it turned in to, hehe.


<Removed cause I hate 'em :D>


Right, I'll stop ranting now :P

[Dragonstorm]

More sketches from my friend:

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/7235/zombiefinishedzx6.jpg

And I jsut finished my first goes at the model and both cartoony and more human like textures. The only difference is the face right now though. I still need to do all the detail on them though, like fingernails, toenails, etc. So lots more fun work ahead hehe.

Over the Summer, I'm hopefully going to be using this as the first model in a game I'm gonna work on. If all goes well, it should be a mass zombie co-op shoot-em-up. If any of you end up playing it with me, then I might have to just add some extra "dev-only" weapons hehe. Nova is gonna be doing this with me, so we're at least hoping to have a 1-level singleplayer mode up and running not too far into the future. Then we can build the multiplayer and a story even from there. Anyways, I'll stop rambling. This is what the zombie looks like so far:


http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/7575/zombies2hb7.jpg


I think that for the humany one I'm gonna take the hair off, not just because its cartoony hair, but I think I like the idea of a bald zombie more. The models themselves I'm pretty happy with, cause as I'm sure you can tell, I've managed to keep the poly count pretty low. I just need to fix some of the vertex normals so it "looks" higher than it is, especially on the head! The really good thing about it though is that it means I should be able to have ALOT of them on-screen at once.

Hmm.. I think they need more blood on them :D




EDIT: Figured I should actually show what one looks like on its own :P
Oooh, and fixed a bit of the squareness too! :D



http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/3034/z1pj5.jpg



EDIT: Added a few more details like fingernails and a bit of muscle definition, wrinkles, etc, then reposted it in the main pic. Also with the slightly less square models.

EDIT: Semi-Naked Zombies!! Scandalous! hehe

[0bitus]

Nice keep up the good work.

[Jekht]

love the 100 zombie picture ds! keep up the good work! :)

[Dragonstorm]

Boredom Strikes!

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/3228/linkbx3.jpg

It's off the back of the wind waker box if anyone think's they've seen it before btw :P

edit: Ya know what's annoying? On my screen the colours are right, how i want 'em, yet on others they don't look right at all. That's quite annoying!
Oooh yah, and look at that awful shadow of him, it's going completely the wrong way... I should never look at my stuff after I'm done, I just find things wrong! hehe

[Twaggy]

It depends on what they have their monitor settings at, I have same problem when I make an image at work. It looks just right on this screen but when I get home and go on mine there I can see plain mistakes that were not there before. It's a pain trying to match the settings when I have this shitty old monitor at work. I do like your image though, it's cool.

[Jekht]

<3 DS art thread. Abit of a random tip, but if a line connects to one point, but not to another, like the line in the middle of the sword, it tends to be a speed stroke, and so the line itself becomes more rounded, and the very tip becomes small and pointy. I find using pencil you can keep drawing speed strokes, and then pen in the ones that were on target.

Awesome colour IMO, despite what you said. It might just be because the other monitor wasn't as colour acurate! On a 16.7 it looks great! Also I dig the shadows, especially on the cap where the shadow has a small salient making the cap look like it might actually be fabric! Shield design also looks class :)

[Dragonstorm]

My example looks horrible and useless I know, but after talking to one of the guys at Rare Studios, he told me how they made the tissue paper effect on all the creatures in Viva Pinata, so I gave it a go:

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/2826/22pe7.jpg

It's definately a very interesting and cheap technique, but seems to work quite well!

Apprently jsut by changing a few things you can make fur, so I'm gonna HAVE to try that out too sooner or laters!

EDIT:

Half an hour later, and I've given it a go:

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/3523/teanq4.jpg

As my friend just said to me, yes it DOES look slightly more knitted than furry. But Tbh I was just guessing with the sizes of the hairs, so at least now I know to make them alot smaller in future.

Oh, I didnt say before, but the reason that this is so interesting, is because those bumps aren't actually there, and this isn't done with any sort or parralax ox bump/normal mapping either. It's all just 2D. It's cool! =D

EDIT:

Right, I quickly just shrunk the hair size:

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4326/tea2dp3.jpg

It looks a little bit more like fuzz now, but I think it being so short, and uniform is really making it look bad. Oh, and the overly quickly set up lighting too! I dunno, it still looks pretty huggable to me, hehe. Ah well, still loving that this technique can do all this weird stuff so easily!

[Jekht]

looks like a giant tea cosy! which i guess is the look you were kinda going for hehe.

I wonder if you can play around with the distribution without ruining it... In anycase, pretty interesting!

I've been looking into this sort of thing myself, and found this interesting fur example, if you want to make a model look monsters inc furry! :o

[Dragonstorm]

I guess the best it about this technique, is that it can all happen in real-time with perfectly acceptable slowdown, so is perfect for games. I was only using about 5 sections for my hairs, but was told that typically you should use 8 to 16, so that would definately help with my length problem. This exact same thing can be used to simulate fur properly aswell, in that say if you had a furry arm, and the arm twists, then the fur would move slower at the tip and 'wobble' realisticly, and all again without being too much that isnt acceptable happening to your fps.

Ps. Did you mean to post a pic J?

[Jekht]

yesum i did! I meant to post this at the bottem of my post for fur!

http://www.xbdev.net/directx3dx/specialX/Fur/index.php

I believe they use this effect in alot of games atm too!

[Dragonstorm]

yesum i did! I meant to post this at the bottem of my post for fur!

http://www.xbdev.net/directx3dx/specialX/Fur/index.php

I believe they use this effect in alot of games atm too!

That's what I was using! :D

Thanks for the link J, VERY interesting!!

[Twaggy]

Loving your work like always man :D

[Dragonstorm]

Random artage, cause I'm really bored tonight and feeling like I'm not using my tabelt enough:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5342/trillvp3.jpg

Tis me trying to get better at anime, and then it sorta turning into Trill in that photo I posted in the Photo thread! :) Also, a random eye that found it's way into my big sketch pad:

http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/3780/eyeks9.jpg

EDIT:

I coloured that in too cause I'm still bored. Although.. Definately don't like the shading... ah well!


http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/1064/eyexm1.jpg

[Denary]

you don't like the shading, if I could draw half as g...... no if I could draw at all I'd be happy with that.

[Dragonstorm]

Not really art, just felt like shouting about this. I just finished writing my first overly basic, overly low tech terrain renderer in Dx. Yes, it's all tutorials and books, and no, those awful textures aren't mine (Although I did do the height and blend maps, yay!), buut, I'm still really happy about getting it all to work and understanding it etc.

I think after learning how to optimise it etc, I could be ready to make the very basics of a game. After all, with a big piece of terrain there's loads of games you can make just by sticking things down on it. I also might try and build a terraforming tool where you can click to lower and raise bits of ground - that kinda crap :D

Anyways:

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/5391/trnja1.jpg


sorry for it being a bit big too btw!

[Jekht]

Very nice, keep us updated!

[NovaBlack]

DS is reading books too fast for me!!

i cant keep up! DAMN YOU!!!!

need to get some more of my AI n graphics stuff done dammit!!


GRIND THOSE BEANS MONKEYS!! ITS COFFEE TIME!

[Dragonstorm]

Yay!! I just made my first noraml map shader, then expanded it into a parallax map shader:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/3280/parallaxmg3.jpg

At the front is the parallax mapped plane, and behind the normal mapped. The colored one is the normal map used as a colouring texture.

Anyways, I carried on playing, then I got this:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5720/tst1jq5.jpg

This I'm really proud of! Its a parallax mapped plane with nice bumpy rocks, but then to top it off, it has water running between the rocks. You can raise and loswer the water level, adjust the water speed/colour/blending etc. The water can go completely, or entirely cover the rocks. I'll get around to adding proper lighting and reflections for the water at some point soon hopefully, but I'm happy anyway!

It's nice seeing as it's all one 2D square!

[Dragonstorm]

Yay, I added some real-time reflections (although you can't see much, hehe), better lighting and even some nice green slime on the rocks!

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/8603/parallaxreflectionstq6.jpg

Ps. sorry about the size as usual!

[Renzouken]

Cool. Like the way you've cropped the edges to make it appear more three-dimensional, you ain't foolin' no-one. ;)

...But aye, pretty clever DS.

[Jekht]

DS gains one forum CQ point.

Keep up the good work dude! :)

[Veube]

Are you using DirectX to do all this cleverness ? I could never get my head around DirectX. :(

[Dragonstorm]

Yeah jsut 9 atm though, really can't be bothered with Vista and DX10 :)

I was ding this, because I'm working on my tech demo that I want to apply for placements at studios with the coming summer. Studios like Rare want you to apply by November apprently! :(

What I want to have eventually is that same scene with the rocks, but instead I'll drop a ball of water into the center. Then I want the water to flow out between the cracks, and slowly even out, etc. Then I want to take that a step further and have it flow down a wall using the same technique, and from the wall onto a floor tile and spead away form the wall.

THEN! I want to expand the technique a bit further and have a small scene with a person being shot. I want blood particles to spray out towards, and onto a wall behind him/her, and then flow normally down and out from the wall along the floor.

I was chatting to one of my lecturers today, and he seems quite sure that it's more than possible, and with perfectly acceptible frame rates too. So, over the next week or two yeah, I should hopefully start getting somewhere with all this stuff.

If I ever get there, I'll post a demo on the forums to download :)

[Dragonstorm]

http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/9425/initialoo2.jpg

|
V

http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/2065/67672360sk1.jpg

|
V

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4188/79335884ef4.jpg


That may not look like anything in particular, and it might definately be hard to see why it's so important to me, but it's big! Oh yeah!

[0bitus]

Im thinking... T-1000.

[Dragonstorm]

I actually got a hacked to hell demo of this working a while ago, but forgot to post anything! So here:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1684/24753352pv3.jpg

|
|
V

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/4089/26066015ru7.jpg

|
|
V

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1980/53924601kd0.jpg


Sorry about the bigger than usual pictures! As for actual re-usable programming, etc. I really couldn't use that anywhere atm, its just hacked together so badly, but I'm working on rebuilding it so I can. It runs pretty well for me at least, athough it's an un-optimised whore of a program, so maybe not for everyone!

I'm really looking forward to having liquid spill (I just chose blood (Yes i know it doesn't look like blood! :D) here because you can see it so well) in one of my projects then having it flow between cracks etc. Oh, and before anyone says it, I know the liquid above spreads a bit far, but it's made that way just to help demonstrate the technique! It actually does calculate things so the water has a set volume to move around with, and will get the right looking normals on edges, etc. so it looks like it's the right shape.

Anyways, I've got a ~6mb demo that i'll post if anyone wants to watch it real-time. I'm going to work on something more substancial though, like maybe a scene with someone falling down and blood coming from under them, or maybe someone knocking a glass of water onto the floor. I guess you could wait for that, but it'll be a long while ;)




Also, I've jsut spent an hour this morning working on a space station-esque area for some reason:

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1104/rendql9.jpg

Although I dunno why, I have nothing to do with it! hehe. I think it was Mass Effect inspiring me to have big giant panels all over the place :D The middle wall pattern is from he wall in the Human Embassy!

[Eirik]

Nice!

[Dragonstorm]

I'm really bored this weekend, so I figured I'd carry on building a bit more of that station thingy from above. It has corners now! :o

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3162/rendtx1.jpg
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5609/rendwx9.jpg

I think I might cut out the holes in that floor grate and put some pipes or wires underneath it. Although then that's going towards a messy station where I'd need crap all over the place which is the complete opposite of what I've got so far! :O

I think what it might need is a computer terminal or something like that. Hmmm... *goes off to create*

[Ackercoke]

currently it looks very early levels of portal

[Jekht]

looking sweet!

[Dragonstorm]

I ended uploading a video and executable of my dynamic fluid demo for an intership I'm applying for, and since it's on my site now, I may aswell share the links:

Video (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/dynamicliquid/LiquidShader_high.wmv) ~12mb
Exe (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/dynamicliquid/dynamic_liquid.zip) ~4mb

Hopefully the d/l speed shouldn't be bad, and the files should actually work. Lemme know what you think of it if you take a look please!

If anyone's interested (not likely, i know! hehe) in how any of it works, I've written a rough guide on my site too here (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/3ddynamicliquid.htm) btw.

EDIT:
Exe link doesn't work, so head here (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/currentprojects.htm) instead to grab it.

[Ackercoke]

can't get the .exe to download,

clicking it respawns the page, right click save as = 133kb file that does nought any ideas

Downloading vid atm aswell

current fix is right click properties, follow the link in a new tab and it down loads

does This (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/dynamicliquid/dynamic_liquid.zip) work I wander nope it worked once and then I broked it

[Jekht]

*checks it out and downloads*

I'm spending alot more time animating in maya, so this sort of stuff is interesting to me ;)

[Ackercoke]

does the liquid expand into eternity though, or will it stop when its mass is exceeded?

PS very cool and quite interesting btw

aww i gots a D3dx9_32.dll error when running the .exe

[Dragonstorm]

Thanks for the feedback so far :)

clicking it respawns the page

No idea why the exe/zip link doesn't work, it does the same for me too. Maybe it's because of where it's hosted to stop people lkinking like that? *shrug*

Anyway, try heading to the actual page it's from here (http://www.freewebs.com/cjtbunner/currentprojects.htm) and it should let you d/l.

does the liquid expand into eternity though, or will it stop when its mass is exceeded?

On that particular demo it's set to expand forever to make the effect more visible, but it does have a set mass and properties yah, so it doesn't 'normally' expand forever it'll slow and stop.

aww i gots a D3dx9_32.dll error when running the .exe

The dx*.dll error means you need to d/l the lastest DirectX I think. They release a new version every couple of months or so and I compiled this program using last months (maybe?) so that might fix it. I'll just include the dll in the package from now on though which should fix it without making you have to do that, so thanks for that, things like this are what I need to fix! :)

EDIT:
Re-uploaded the exe/zip which both d3dx9_32.dll and d3dx9d_32.dll included, so hopefully that'll help out someone!

EDIT:
If you do get the exe to run btw, please let me know what FPS it roughly runs at (at least at the start anyway) please. The fps is displayed in the top right-hand corner. I'm getting around 1500 average, all the way up to about 2000, but I'm interested to see what other people get!

[Ackercoke]

I'd have just started looking for a fix tommorow :p

[NovaBlack]

runs about 1380 fps for me!

[Ackercoke]

75fps

thats an nvidia 7600 GT pcie card =/

[Jekht]

Just watched the video. It's pretty cool! What sort of thing would you apply that to? Could you modify it further, or use the same principles to make shore wash (from the sea up a rocky beach for example)?

It all looks very cool :p keep it up DS!

[HoniezUk]

Cool pictures DS.
I've been trying to make picture with Blender.
This is my latest one. (It was a gift to a friend)
I want to learn more things on Blender but my computer is kinda slow to genorate animation from it.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4310/picture1iz8.png

[Dragonstorm]

Haha, I love how Honiez walks quietly in here and goes:

"Wow! That's some really nice work! I've been trying things like that, but it's not very good, I don't really get much practice... :("

*fives seconds later...*

"Oh what's this masterpiece doing in my pocket? .. Guess I might as well show it to you guys!"

*pulls out a big spectacular, jawdropping piece*


Hehe, nice stuff as always Hon :) That rose is reaully beatiful. I love wilted red ones when it's that very dark colour, almost black.

I have the technical skill in modelling programs now with all this practice I get to make what I want and then use it, but unfortuantely I don't have the artistic talent and skill that you (and other here) do. Most things I make have to be quite strict and proportioned so that I can get scales, etc. right. That and I just never have a vision of something I actually want to build!

If you can export that scene btw Hon and don't mind uploading it or something, please do, I'd love to play around with it :D It shouldn't matter about what format it is.

[G0rF]

Hah!

I can completely relate to that!

I got the maths-brain, my brother got the artistic / creative brain.

After years spent tinkering with other people's creations, I ended up an engineer...

Should have been an animator maybe...

[HoniezUk]

Haha, I love how Honiez walks quietly in here and goes:

"Wow! That's some really nice work! I've been trying things like that, but it's not very good, I don't really get much practice... :("

*fives seconds later...*

"Oh what's this masterpiece doing in my pocket? .. Guess I might as well show it to you guys!"

*pulls out a big spectacular, jawdropping piece*


Hehe, nice stuff as always Hon :) That rose is reaully beatiful. I love wilted red ones when it's that very dark colour, almost black.

I have the technical skill in modelling programs now with all this practice I get to make what I want and then use it, but unfortuantely I don't have the artistic talent and skill that you (and other here) do. Most things I make have to be quite strict and proportioned so that I can get scales, etc. right. That and I just never have a vision of something I actually want to build!

If you can export that scene btw Hon and don't mind uploading it or something, please do, I'd love to play around with it :D It shouldn't matter about what format it is.



hehe sorry DS. *^_^*

Anyways where do I upload it?
its a .blend file

found this site.
http://www.uploading.com/files/MN27LNLW/newonewith_all.blend.html
hope it works

[Dragonstorm]

Thanks for the link Hon :) I'll try downloading it in a bit.

And yay for randomness! This isn't anything special but I found it whilst cleaning up some old files today. Two lightsaber models from when I was modding Oblivion ages ago:

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/1271/ambzu2.jpg

I love that render method :D Who needs textures :p

It's kinda like being a Jedi, everyone has to make their own lightsaber at some point!


EDIT:
I'm loving finding all this old crap, hehe. A few random guns:

http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/9750/blasteruw1.jpg

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/455/gunscm6.jpg

[0bitus]

Nice, keep up the good work!

[savity]

Running the exe - I get "checkdeviceCaps() failed". Is this cos I don't have a SM3.0 gfx card?

I'm getting a new gfx tomorrow - will try again then

[Dragonstorm]

Running the exe - I get "checkdeviceCaps() failed". Is this cos I don't have a SM3.0 gfx card?

I'm getting a new gfx tomorrow - will try again then

file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/PHILIP%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-3.jpg

Yeah tis. The prog uses Pixel Shader 3.0, because I haven't written it that well ;) It could probably be 2.0 if I re-write it.

It should have popped up and explicitly said though that you need Pixel Shader 3.0 rather than the vague error you got, silly program.

[Dragonstorm]

Been meaning to make one of these for months now!

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9074/cubewz6.jpg

:D

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/770/cube2wz8.jpg

[Dragonstorm]

Made a pretty major (imo) update to my dynamic liquid tech demo by adding Gravity. Well actually it can be an external force in any direction, but no doubt I'll just be playing around with Gravity

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/175/extforce1jd3.jpg


This picture basicaly tries to show it in action. The force in the above demo is ating in the direction of the blue arrow, and hopefully you can see that the fluid is behaving differently than before, by flowing heavily in one direction (the two large pools were the start).

I'm really excited about this, and now I'm jsut a few steps away from having a splatter on the wall flow down it, then pool out onto the floor. So hopefully I'll have that to show off soon! :D

[Dragonstorm]

This is jsut something I spent half an hour or so making this morning. It randomly hit me that some pathfinding algorithms that I had to use in a recent assignment would lend themselves really well to lightning patterns, and so:

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3767/astarlightninggc8.jpg

Although it's nothing special graphically, it's the shapes I'm interested in. The lightning begins at the clouds and works it's way through the air, deciding the best path based on randomised resistances in the air. Once it hits the floor, it fills in the pattern to show the user. I really like how they've come out tbh, and with a little manipulation I think could really look good graphically too.

Lots of the details of the path generation are easily tweaked, but mostly they just change the "craziness" of the final shape, anywhere from completely straight to arcing around the entire area.

I'd really like to expand it to have mini arcs coming off at random points, as well as making alot more of the arcs smoother with more bunched up sharp points.

[Dragonstorm]

I face-genned myself out of boredom:

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/9320/meef8.jpg


Think I shoulda made the hair a bit more squiggly :)

[Eirik]

O_o Like that picture :p

[Jekht]

Hair is tricky.... I'm tempted to download a plugin for it, but I suppose I should learn how to do it with the default tools before I get mod happy.

Nice work as usual DS

[Dragonstorm]

Thanks guys :) For the hair on that J, I stole it from Oblivion. It looks really good in there, ncei straight anime-style hair. If you just spam the noise and twist modifier thingies on it though it looks alot more natural. I'd say go for it with the mods though, especially if you're just doing it for fun with no restrictions.

I've jsut done about as much as I can be bothered with Nova's level now. This is what I ended up with after my print-screen spree in t2_rogue (JKA level):

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/8968/buildsjj6.jpg

Unfortunately it never quite comes out the same in-game 'cause of the shitty engine we're using. Ah well, if you put aside the awful texture filtering and no anti-aliasing, I still like it. Quite happy with how the UI came out too:

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/5898/47499302cx2.jpg

The blending on the spot lights and holograms came out much better in-game though, because the I had to build the tex's with that in mind, which is why they're so dark in the 3ds max render. The actual inside screen for the li'l radar in the corner I helped show Nova how to make, but he made it himself (My apprentice is learning!!), and it works really well in-game. He made animated static and scanlines on it, then when another racer sends you a taunt, I made the lights light-up for him, then Nova finished by making the other racer's face come up and the taunt play. It's really cool!

Anyways, then just 'cause it was demanding it (read: Nova kept requesting things, hehe), I added a little laser battle to that big bridge:

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/479/67284235kn9.jpg


The 3 people shoot lasers back and forth whichis quite nice to watch. The gam ehe's made is a racing game, and you fly right over the bridge, so you don't have time to see the really awkward poses I put the people in, hehe. I might add some nicer stuff, possibly a jedi, more intricate buildings, who knows. But for now, I'm hapy enough with it :) Hurray for Nova not being able to model, hehe.

[Jekht]

lol awesome it's starwars meets the matrix

[NovaBlack]

haha im well chufffed with the city!!

guess me n DS will TRY n post our crappy games when we are done!!

the funny thing is both of us were meant to have a team of 5 members like the rest of the year, but now i have ONE other member (the rest left uni!) and ds only has 2 others!

we so need to mke the best games in the year now, just to rub it in that we did it with teams of under half the size ! lol:D


on a side note im experimenting with some LOOOVERRRLLY particle effects using DS laser texture..


looks like a firework show!!

(additionally i had a strange effect that looked like a cloud of Boos from mario lol... Random emergent behaviour ftw!)

[Dragonstorm]

Whole host of stuff from two assignments in tomorrow. First up is my graphics assignment; We had to build a small scene and show a bunch of shaders in it. In mine I have shiny per-pixel lighting, normal mapping, parallax mapping, omni-directional shadow mapping, environment mapping and bloom for my main bits. Then just a few extra things like scrolling textures for water and some wiggling tentacle models. Here's a few shots that I liked, although they don't show off much, hehe, more really one off effects from certain locations. The first two are just nice, the third tries to show the scene I used.

Bloom turned up alot:

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/8052/32781017xd2.jpg

Nice sky box and a bit of bloom:

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6812/40636781cj4.jpg

View of the scene:

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/4861/16051533wu0.jpg

Lots of lights with bloom and all with correct shadowing:

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/2518/48700470zu2.jpg

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/9100/94900998cg3.jpg


Last one to show the nice water light reflections:

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/4958/59331139xs7.jpg


I modelled and textured the scene myself, only robbing a few textures from other places :) I really like the final thing I came out with, and love the screen doors on the little hut. I'll upload a shot later showing the shadow effects gained from them if I can grab a nice one. The shadows stretch across the entire room really nicely.


The other assignment I've got in tomorrow is a group assignment where we had to build a game over the past few months. My group decided to build a little puzzle game, the aim of which is to roll a ball through a maze to a goal, whilst avoiding holes and other things. Then we added little puzzles in where you had to change the ball to a certain state to get past certain sections; e.g. Change to water to pass through and put out a fire section. Really happy with the final product we came out with, even if its a bit buggy and crashes occasionally. I've just spent the past two days going all out on the hand-in making box and cd art, which finally ended up like this:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2332/mf1hm8.jpg

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/507/mf2er9.jpg

My friend in the group drew the front cover art, then I stuck all the logos on and put it together with a back cover. I'll get a shot of the CD art too when I get a chance.

Here's a quick shot of the second level in action:

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7314/mf3hl6.jpg

I made all the models and textures for the entire game, which I'm really happy about, because for a programmer, they came out quite well. There's a few different themes in the game so all the UI and level textures change as you carry on. It features full working high score systems, unique music for each level and theme and lots of other little niceness.

I'll upload a copy of both these programs when I get a chance, although they're quite big so it'll be a rapidshare/megaupload job.


Ps. Nova if you decide to post some of your stuff, do it in your own thread! :P



EDIT: Uploaded a bunch of new shots for the gfx assignment.

[Jekht]

Love the bloomey one mate!

[Dragonstorm]

Rare employees said they were impressed with my tech demo I posted ages ago... Yay! :D

[Jekht]

N1! :D

Any chance towards the end of this accademic year you can link me to a few tutorials on the more technical side? In return I could always rapidshare some digital tutors video lessons on modelling life like objects, or take pictures of some of my notes on 3d animation techniques to ensure that you're characters don't look like they moonwalk everywhere, or I could post some of my layout and visual psychology notes...

Dunno, maybe you don't want any of that! In anycase after that film festival I've realised how passionate I'm getting about procedural art and how bad I am at actionscript and understanding CG from a scientific viewpoint and your help would be.... helpful!!

[Dragonstorm]

Well, think it's important that maybe I build something and you create something at somepoint... ;-) Could be a masterpiece! hehe. But yeah, nearly into Summer break, so if I don't get the Rare internship I'll try to help with stuff if poss :D

EDIT:

On a more serious note though about the 2-3 months of Summer hols: If me and Nova don't get R.Intshps, then we've got some pretty big projects in mind that we want to work on instead, and of course any help with those would be appreciacted. I'll let you know what we're up to if/when we get started so you can see if it's anything you might be interested in :) Might be the kind of experience you're after in doing some of the more technical sides graphics: General rendering techniques and processes, handling animations, the mightiness of shaders, etc... basically the whole graphics pipeline that you could explore if you wanted to I guess and work with us as we're putting things together.

Obviously if that doesn't sound like what you're after at the time (being too game-oriented perhaps?) , then you'll just have to ask more specific questions I guess and we'll try to point you towards any good books or articles we can if we can't help directly!

[0bitus]

Ds does your course not have a year in placement?

[Jekht]

Oh no, game orientated is perfect. Right now, like you, I have way too much work on my plate. During the Summer though, I'd be happy to help with any modelling and animation you need done. edit: adding enthusiasm: I'd love to collaborate!! :p

Tbh, what I'm looking for atm is most of your first year syllabus. My syllabus is hard but interesting enough that I feel I can add some extra studies during the Summer.

[Dragonstorm]

Ds does your course not have a year in placement?

Yeah it does have the option for it, and I was considering doing a full year out at Rare. All our tutors though told us repeatedly that it's ultimately not worth it though, because if we're good enough to get the placement position now, then we'd get the job at the end, so got convinced to not do it :(


Tbh, what I'm looking for atm is most of your first year syllabus. My syllabus is hard but interesting enough that I feel I can add some extra studies during the Summer.

I'm sure similar to your stuff, our entire (games side at least) lectures for last, this and next year are all hosted online including all lab work sheets and source code to play with etc. I'll go through it at some point with you if we get a chance and show you were everything is and what it's for.

[Jekht]

Well even if you just provide me with a link that would be great. I'd happily do the same for you, but dunno how much of the pre-production and design process would interest you lol.

Anyways, maybe chat about it again when we both have more time! :p

[0bitus]

Mmmmm im a keen believer that uni can only teach you so much, but i can see your lecturers point i suppose.

[Dragonstorm]

Mmmmm im a keen believer that uni can only teach you so much, but i can see your lecturers point i suppose.


One of the many reasons I do so much work outside of Uni myself and wanted to go on this placement so mcuh. Just eventually got worn down by the amount of people advising against it :(

[Jekht]

Ditto, the main reason I'm begging for DS's notes lol... The creative practice has alot of tough competition, so if I want to succeed I need to take my interests to an excessive realm!

[Dragonstorm]

Been spending my not much free time in the past few days re-creating a building from Atlas Park in CoH. I find it's good practice to try and copy something else to see if I can use the tools rightly, plus it's nice to relax a bit during all these exams! Good exercises for basic texture mapping and poly count. I'm pretty happy with how it's come out, all textures and model parts done by me for once, instead of my usual one or two stolen texs.

I usually head in-game and take lots of screens from every angle, then use in-game /location commands to get rough scales to play with too. Makes things alot easier if you know something like (in this case) the seperator bit is about 1/5th of of the main brick part or whatever. This building is kinda a little in-front and to alot to the right of where the Atlas statue is looking btw if you're interested.

http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/3137/26129739oj6.jpg

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8593/16840325sy9.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9392/84960060wa6.jpg

I'm probably going to try and remake at least a few more of them all within the correct scales, etc. Alot of the pieces on this building are re-used as shown alot which should make this easier, and the models I've made there are in parts especially so they can be scaled, e.g. the Fire Escape has the start/repeating and the end/one-off sections to make it tileable. The windows are also seperated so I can hide them at a distance if needed like in the game.

I'll probably make something in DirectX at the end with it, say some weather system or something. Then maybe stick a guy with a gun in for FPS fun in CoH? Nothing good mind you, just a couple of days pissing around so I feel ike I'm making these for a reason rather than just to add to my archives! :D



EDIT:

Boredom strikes, so look at infinite exstensibility :P Ooooohh, mystical!

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4234/41245288sy1.jpg

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/2586/25039186ea1.jpg

[Jekht]

ooh pretty... looks very authentic!

[G0rF]

Deus Ex.

Hells Kitchen.

Keep up the good work DS.

[Dragonstorm]

Thanks :)

I've gotta wonder though why I spend so much time modelling when I should be programming, hehe.

[G0rF]

Uh, because it's interesting, and you can see your work taking shape as you go along.

Millions of lines of C# ain't exactly engaging...

[Jekht]

QFT G0rf.

Also it's because it's not your work! If you had to be modelling all the time, it gets a little dull.

[G0rF]

Uh... actually Jek...

[Veube]

Millions of lines of C# ain't exactly engaging...

Oh ? .... just me then. :(

Modelling something gives you an instant achievement "buzz" but working out properties, methods, and interactions of each piece of the object in code; bringing the whole thing to life is a whole new level of "buzz".

[G0rF]

Ah, that only comes with years of experience though Ve, the ability to visualise your code as application.

As the man once said: "These days I only see red-head, blonde..."

[Dragonstorm]

Oh ? .... just me then. :(

Modelling something gives you an instant achievement "buzz" but working out properties, methods, and interactions of each piece of the object in code; bringing the whole thing to life is a whole new level of "buzz".

Totally agree with you Ve. Since I work on graphics apps mostly though and writing shaders I actually get the visual rewards too which is a great motivation. I do love a bit of good architeture though, have to say :)

I was so overly chuffed when I finally got some matrix calculations to work out a while ago after trying for a ages. And the visual result was minimal at best, but nothing like looking at some well written, WORKING code, hehe :D Ultimately it jsut added a tiny, yet very useful interaction with my models. Nice 'clever' stuff ftw!

Don't you love though how the smartest code always comes down to a couple of lines that do what you were trying to do in 20? hehe.

I think I'm gonna have to go with the "it's not work" answer. That sounds the most like my sub-concious attitude... and concious one for that matter!

[Dragonstorm]

From the work I spend not enough time on, because I have nothing else to do this morning, I bring you: BUTTERED TOAST! Lol.

Just for a minute though, just imagine if I spent more time on this, every game could have realistic buttered toast! All thanks to mee! You could even have pancakes! Or bagels! :o The list goes on and on! Hehe...

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/6029/31831224wb9.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/5639/43273296ux1.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6426/33113501wt2.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7118/58109844wi9.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/858/76147199cn4.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6020/23448739yr6.jpg

Was fun attempt making it go clear as it gets "thinner", although woulda been better if I'd used a butter model in the middle first I guess, or used more than a linear falloff for the change. Should be very useful to keep this in mind though now I've done it, so got that from my toast if nothing else, lol :D

[Dragonstorm]

Jsut been watching some anime, and I thought I'd spend half an hour or so having a go at making a shader to do that fancy hair highlight anime always has. That ring that goes around their head and just slgihtly lightens it.

I stole the hair from an old Oblivion Mod I had, then just added a splash of colour to each. No Idea why I changed the white to blue btw! Yuck!

Firstly just getting a basic highlight thats greater around the edges:

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/6708/57513654dq5.jpg

Then cutting it into bands:

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/4448/33272680pp7.jpg


Finding a set of tones for the final colours to sit in:

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/796/52096424xk8.jpg

Combining the bands with the tones:

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5858/75863013hi1.jpg

Thinning out the bands at the center, and giving the edges more height:

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/7482/43327593if6.jpg

Final results:

http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/7694/43566498ne5.jpg

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/7900/62635421cf5.jpg


I'm quite happy with it for a first attempt. I think it would come out alot nicer on some fully modelled hair rather than the "lots of 2d sheets stuck together" hair here, but ah well.

The bands are always widest near to the edge of the hair, and stays similar as the camera moves around which is nice. The overall size is relative to the hair, so if you move away it gets smaller.

I really like the first two pics btw, before it became more cell-shaded. That's a nice tech for when you're doing fur and similar stuff, and the second makes it looks like maybe the light is coming through blinds. Luverly stuff!

Any tips for the band or hair colours btw?

[Jekht]

Yeah love the second shot! Atmospheric lighting ftw. With the celshaded version, would it be possible to turn the contrast up and change the levels to the point that the ring was still think, but white? Also do the bands move dependant on light source? Just interested is all lol.

I was about to post a human head i just made then pc crashed, so gonna have to redo like an hours worth of it :/

[Dragonstorm]

Always save every other change you do, it's the law!! :D

And yeah, there's one light in front of the 3 hair pieces atm that is making the light bands on them. As for the contrast etc, yeah I can change whatever. If you can post a sample pic of what you've got in mind that would lemme steal the colours exactly!

EDIT:

Here's roughly what it's doing atm:

The main lighting

The light is measured by how much the surface normal points at the light source. This is a value from 0 - 1; 0 being no light and 1 being full light. Once I have a nice smooth light value from working out this value across the hair, I can clamp it to a range. In the pics before there's 3 values.

0.0 - 0.3 -> 0.3 lighting
0.3 - 0.5 -> 0.5 lighting
0.5 - 1.0 -> 1.0 lighting

Or there abouts anyway. So basically if you can give me a picture I can have a look at how they clamp it, how many layers there are, etc. and just stick the relevant numbers into my shader.

The band highlight

Basically this just tests two things:

1. Am I near the banding height, and then the nearer I am the brighter the highlight.
2. Am I near the edges of the head realtive to the camera, and again, the nearer I am the brighter and larger the highlight.

When you combine these two you get a bright shine that widens at the edges relative to the camera. This is passed through similar clamping to the other light so that hair is either highlighted or not in this case. Here's the unclamped shine at this point for interest:

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/6112/32185581fi9.jpg

So it's pretty easy to set how wide the center is, how wide the outer parts are, and how far outer shines falloff into the center or get pushed up at the edges like now. All of them are just a number here or there.

I just messed around very quickly after that last post, and it's easy to add things so that the highlight for example, doesnt show in the darkest areas of the hair, only on the other, lighter bands (see the left shot just above). Or that the highlight itself can have inner and outer banding like the main hair. Tonnes of customisation, but once you get more than 3-4 layers overlapping it really gets too messy.

So anyways, post a pic or some numbers and I'll steal it! :D